So the old bugger finally gets a MOJO magazine all to himself! It all started for us around the late ’60s. Blues people were studiously eying their tatty plimsolls, and Flower Power bands were showering us all with false love and kisses. A few of us thought it was time for a change. We needed a bit of flair, a bit of showmanship – a revolution for fun!

When I first saw David with the Spiders, the impact was the same as when I first saw Jimi Hendrix. They were totally different musically, but both were visually amazing. David was with Angie at the time and they were experimenting with all kinds of sartorial outrageousness. Suzi Fussey, who later married Mick Ronson, was busy changing his hair and Sue Frost was sewing up outfits for 10 quid a time. David was the icon and Ronno the rocker – and it worked.

They built up an entirely new audience by gigging up and down the country. They had great songs, too. In fact, we rather took a fancy to one of them ourselves! [All The Young Dudes gave Mott The Hoople a top 3 hit in summer 1972.] David was – and remains – a clever lad and master of the move. And, of course, Tony DeFries, his manager at that time, could get an elephant outside of Harrods in half an hour if that was what David wanted.

Ronno’s classical background added a totally unique flavour to it all, while Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder held the back line – and off they were into history. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders, Mott The Hoople, Roxy Music…

“[Bowie scrawled on the box of the ‘Suffragette City’ demo] ‘This might be of some use to you, would you like to cover it?’ We played it and didn’t think it was quite right…[I called Bowie] and said ‘Thanks very much for the tape, we won’t be recording it because we’ve split up. And he sounded genuinely upset…He called me back two hours later and said he’d spoken to Tony DeFries, his manager at MainMan, who would try to get us out of the position we were in. He said, ‘Also, I’ve written a song for you since we spoke, which could be great…[A few days later] Bowie played me this song, ‘All The Young Dudes’ on his acoustic guitar. He hadn’t got all the words but the song just blew me away, especially when he hit the chorus.”

“We couldn’t believe it…In the office at Regent Street he’s strumming it on his guitar and I’m thinking, he wants to give us that? He must be crazy! We broke our necks to say yes! You couldn’t fail to see it was a great song.”

“I remember going to get a pizza with David Bowie while we were recording the album at Trident…His record ‘Starman’ was one the jukebox while we were waiting, and he said, ‘Yours will be on soon.’ I said ‘Yeah, great, but for some reason I’m not as excited as I would have been if it had come from the band.’ And he said, ‘I know what you mean.’”

“We owe a big debt to David, because without [‘All The Young Dudes’], I think we’d have been finished…You can say it might have had an adverse effect on the band’s image, but without it there wouldn’t have been a band. Simple as that.”

“David was trembling [when he first met Mott The Hoople]…He had this big thing, he thought we were very heavy dudes. He used to tell people I was the head of a motorcycle gang and he had this very heavy deal about us.”

“David was one of the few people who can walk in and there is magic in the room. He has a very inquisitive mind, he’s fast, and you feel that the guy knows more than you do so you put yourself in his hands. That has never happened before or since with me.”